No CD player, more CD's purchased than ever!

A really good Nina Simone double cd arrived yesterday, which cost me the princely sum of £1.60 including postage. Hi-res downloads are great, but at £18 each you can get a lot of CDs instead. I've been buying far too many and have vowed to cut down.

Indeed. When I hear new music and discover it is only available for mp3 download I am rather depressed. My CD collection, 30 years in the making, has doubled in the two years I've had a US.

Here in the U.S. (NY area), I go to garage sales as often as possible, and at $.25 to $1.00 per CD, I feel I can't possibly beat that bargain for sound quality/price. My best haul was one Saturday morning, when I came home with about 40 great jazz CDs (Bill Evans, Brubeck, Chet Baker, Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, Ron Carter, etc.) for maybe $15 total. To me, getting this kind of variety and quality becomes something like enjoying a delicious musical buffet.

In the last month, I've just about finished ripping my 1200 CD collection into my iMac+WD ext HD (soon to add NAS) in ALAC, and they're played through my Sonos Connect > irDAC > Naim XS2 > B&W CM5s. I can't see spending $20 USD for HiRez downloads (and the Sonos can't play them, anyway), and it sure beats the heck out of Spotify, streaming radio, Pandora, and the like, as I am fully content at 16/44 lossless resolution at this point. In addition to garage sales, I also go to the thrift shops and have found some great things there too. It's all a great way of adding to the musical options at low cost.

When I finish backing all this up onto several onsite and off-site hard drives, I will donate all the CDs to a local charity thrift shop, and hope that someone else will get similar enjoyment at a great price, and the circle possibly begins again!!

I too have a Unitiserve/Superuniti combo and also have never bought more CDs. Where I live there are some great second hand cd shops and I get a credit when I bring in the CDs I have ripped against  getting new ones. Let's hope the hard drive in the US does not crap out! Could not face having to do it all again. What is the best way of backing up the hard drive in the US without spending too much and being not too difficult to use, as I value simplicity of operation?

Kiwi Cat,

I assume you are talking about the legendary Slow Boat Records? What shop - many a happy hour spent in there sifting..

Sorry, can't help you regarding backup, as i have the UServe ssd with raid nas.

btw ( re your profile) , we live next to Cook Strait - it is anything but straight !

Back to the op. Yes I too purchase more cds than ever now too since the UServe on the scene. I feel sorry for the cd-less generation who won't be able to enjoy a browse through the racks of their local cd store on a Saturday afternoon...

( go Argentina.)

You are so right Dis. Slow boat records rocks! Apparently Robert Plant visited them a year or two ago and bought some early NZ pop records.

Recommened to any Naim devotees visiting Peter Jacksonville, and local naim dealer just around the corner! 

Also, go Argentina(Southern Hemisphere bias)!

Is it true your CDs spin counter-clockwise down under?

Kiwi cat, best way to back up the US is to buy a NAS.

The US can be scheduled to automatically back up to the NAS.

Mine is set up to auto back up once a week.

I also like the easy option, and this is one of the features on the USthat I appreciate the most!

I also keep a second back up via a USB hard drive that i will update maybe once per month.

Sounds like there are some great shops and options around the world for stocking up on CD's!

A NAS drive it is then. Sounds quite convenient, will see the local dealer about it. He should be able to make it work counterclockwise!

One thing to note : if you rip the music and then sell the CD or give it away, you no longer own the copyright and thus hold the music illegally. 

I have a Synology 213j NAS with twin WD Red 3TB drives, and like others have an automated weekly backup from the UnitiServe. Once set up it all works really well. 

Chris, I totally agree. I still maintain we are at a golden age for CD for the consumer, but not for the big record companies...

There is a good reliable source of pre owned CDs, albeit I have noticed prices have started to drift upwards recently, and there is strong competition in new CD retail which makes them probably the most relatively affordable they have ever been, often cheaper than the lossy download equivalent.

Also because of the internet self or small scale publishing is easier than it was, many smaller bands create or specialist publishers produce their own CDs and sell directly online.. usually in parallel to a lossy download for those just wanting to listen on a basic headphone system or smartphone which  are many.

I also am buying more CDs than ever before with no active CD player. I am also collecting rare CD recordings which is also fun and rewarding. Some of my rare CDs seem to be appreciating in value at a bizarre rate... At least having ripped them, I can keep them nice and safe and still enjoy them. [rare Italian film music CDs seem to be in demand currently]

Simon

I still have a CDX2 but it doesn't get used at all ( I really need to get round to selling it ) because the NDX is such a joy to use. And because my NAS automatically copies all my music and playlists to its twin in France, I also have my complete collection there. I will never sell the CDs because, besides being illegal, they are last resort backups. I do find that I don't read the CD covers as much as I did before though.

All CDs to the attic from now on. My children should have the opportunity to enjoy the antiquated software in years  hence on their $20 Naim cd3.5s.

I kept mine after the HDX arrived. I dusted it for a year then sold it. I have also never bought more music, including on CD, since this house went to streaming.

Why would it be illegal to sell your CDs? Is it so because you keep a copy?

Anyway, I have to agree that it's very nice to stream music and not having to stumble around in CD covers. And N-Stream provides info which I often find myself reading. I cannot say I used to do that much with the CD booklets.

Unfortunately, CDs are not cheap in Norway as the retail chain Platekompaniet pretty much wiped out its competition so really cheap CDs are few and far between.

Ignoring the legality of keeping a copy of music that you don't have a license for, I think that there is a moral issue as well. Taken to extremes, only one CD could be bought and then that CD could be passed around the whole population with everyone making a copy. How much money would be made? How would everyone involved in the process of making and selling the CD afford to live?

I never bought into the “home taping is killing music” argument. Not making a tape backup would have slowly killed my music collection. Listen to any seasoned music writer from the last 50 years or so who has been lucky enough to become comfortable from the proceeds of their output  and you will find many had a young mentality along the lines of music being free, a notion that many of them subsequently (and often rapidly) revised.  But the notion remains in the naive and ignorant and we are neck deep in the technology/ability to easily steal other peoples’ intellectual property, including music.  Not that I have any sympathy for the labels, who persist in blaming  honest punters for anything which puts the slightest crimp in their elephant choking profit margins. Maybe the Finnish model goes some way to compensating artists for theft but it should be an adjunct to laws on illegal copying, not a substitute. One machine, properly paid for and taxed could produce a thousand copies of one album. Even given that media (if any are used) and destination machines are also taxed at purchase, how is that going to compensate the artist for royalties on a thousand sales? Multiply that by five hundred artists – where is the extra income to cover loss of royalties coming from?

If you copy an album (on whatever format) for personal use, to play to friends, play in the car, and so on, OK. But if you give it away and keep a copy or sell it and keep a copy you are depriving the artist and associated personnel of income. Would you work for nothing? Never mind variances in law, what about the morals and honesty? Everybody, moans about Amazon and Starbucks. People who avoid tax legitimacy also come in for a drubbing nowadays despite the fact that they have done nothing illegal. I wonder how many of the finger pointers have never lived in any kind of glass house?

2 good sources amazon used cds can get very cheap even with poastage to Denmark or Norway, and something  even better www.murfie.com. You can buy used cds that other users have stored  at murfie and discovered that they do not want to keep but rather sell them. The cd you buy are kept at Murfie and you can get a flac uncompressed copy.

One advantage  living in Norway is that you can get Wimp uncompressed flac streaming, this is an interesting alternative or  addition to streaming cds.

Claus

1 CD = 500MB

200 CDs = 10GB

Assuming that the revenue lost by the industry is $5 per CD then that is $1000.If it is decided that the average 2TB hard drive contains just 10GB of music then does any system add $1000 to the cost of a hard drive? Or is it simply a few percent of the cost that would get added the same as the recycling levy that some countries have?